"Is Nadia young and fair?"
"Young? Twenty-nine. Fair? Brown as a turf."
"Twenty-nine, and Vanka seventeen!"
"But she is big and bony; strong as a mule, and she can go all day on very little food."
"All that would be well enough, if what you wanted was a slave to thrust a spade and drive a cart."
"That is what the patriarch wants; a servant for himself, a partner for his boy."
"How came Vanka to accept her?"
"Daniel shows him her silver spoons, her shining urns, and her chest of household stuff. The lad stares wistfully at these fine things; Lousha is absent, and the old man nods. The woman kisses him, and all is done."
"Poor Lousha! where is she to-day?"
"Left in the fields to grow. She is not strong enough yet to marry. She could not work for her husband and her husband's father as a wife must do. Far better wait awhile. At twenty-nine she will be big and bony like Nadia; then she will be fit to marry, for then her wild young spirits will be gone."